- Monday, Part 1 - An ordinary American cuts the budget of unnecessary spending.
- Tuesday, Part 2 - A right leaning and a left leaning pair of think tanks develop a joint way to get government spending under control.
- Wednesday, Part 3 - The Cato Institute goes through the Federal budget line by line to cut unnecessary spending.
- Thursday, Part 4 - President Obama On The Budget - Lack Of Leadership and Lack of Courage
- Friday, Part 5 - Fixing Social Security (this is a tentative topic, it assumes I can gather the necessary data and crunch the numbers by then.)
- The Federal government currently owes about $14 TRILLION worth of debt to various parties around the world, including China which is fast approaching the $1 TRILLION mark in U.S. government debt held.
- This $14 TRILLION is a per household burden of about $120,000 per household.
- Under Obama's current budget plans, that $14 TRILLION will grow by about $7 TRILLION over the next ten years, assuming that economic conditions improve and continue to be healthy, i.e. the best case scenario.
- This additional budget debt will increase the average American household's debt burden by about $60,000.
- If nothing is done soon, within a few years the American taxpayer will be spending more on debt interest than on most other discretionary government programs such as education, transportation, etc.
- Almost every state government in the country is fighting the same battle where the political class has allowed government expenses to far outstrip government revenue.
The Democrats are far worse. When Bush was running up debt burdens in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the Democrats hollered about fiscal irresponsibility. When they took over Congress, their House leader Nancy Pelosi declared she would operate a pay-as-you-go House Of representatives, i.e. no new spending would occur unless spending cuts were done elsewhere in the budget. Since she and the other Democrats took over Congress, joined two years later by a Democrat in the White House, Federal government spending deficits and debt have skyrocketed, hitting never before seen, or dreamed of, levels. Trillions of additional debt in a few short years.
Now the Democrats are hollering that some of their favored political government programs are under pressure to have their funding cut. If they had been more fiscally prudent when the had control, this never would have happened. They have no one to blame but themselves. However, this does not prevent their typical hypocrisy from shining through. They had their chance and control and will now have to pay the price. Their proposed budget cuts are so feeble that they make the pathetic Republican cuts look draconian in comparison.
But wait. Maybe I am too hard on these poor folks. Maybe they do not know how to cut the budget. Think about it. They have never had to cut it in the past. They are a lot like the dictatorial regimes and monarchies in the Middle East. They always had enough wealth to spend, even if it placed undue burdens on their fellow citizens. They always got their way and the best of everything: automatic pay raises, lobbyist favors, the best health care, high wages, almost job security for life (at least until last November), etc. Seems like the Washington politicians are just like Mubarak or Qaddafi, or the monarchies in Bahrain and Jordon. Always taking what they wanted for themselves, never having to sacrifice, always living the good life at the expense of others. Maybe they are just too ignorant or inexperienced to manage a budget.
That is where this series of posts comes in. Today we will start with my simpleton view on life and how to get started on cutting the budget. The next few days we will then turn to the experts in the think tanks, both right leaning and left leaning, for further insights on how to get to a smaller but more manageable and more effective government.
If I was running the show, this is where I would start:
- Why do we still have over 50,000 U.S. troops in Germany? The Iron Curtain was destroyed over twenty years ago, maybe we should finally start getting some of that so-called "peace dividend" by bringing these troops home and reducing our military footprint abroad. The same argument could be made for the 30,000 or so troops we have in Japan and the same amount or so in South Korea. If it costs the Obama administration a million dollars a year to put a U.S. soldier into a war zone, then if we assume it costs half of that to maintain a U.S. soldier in a non-war zone, reducing the size of our military by the 110,000 needlessly deployed soldiers in these three countries, we could eventually save over $50 billion a year. Even if the cost of a non-war zone deployment is a quarter of a war zone deployment, the savings would still be about $25 billion a year.
- Even though the President campaigned to get us out of Iraq as soon as possible, we still have 50,000 troops there. Bring them home and eventually save at least $12.5 billion as year.
- Budget earmarks are really nothing more than a thinly disguised way for incumbent politicians to get re-election campaign donations using taxpayer money. It is really quite a simple process:
- Assume Congressman A puts a million dollars budget appropriation/earmark into a budget bill for Company X to do some government work that may or may not be needed. Company X then turns around and arranges to send Congressman A's campaign fund a check for some amount of money. Everybody wins but the taxpayer who foots the bill for the earmark, rarely sees the benefit, and helps ensure the continuation of the incumbent's career. Conservative estimates put the annual earmark cost at around $16 billion. Eliminate earmarks, bank the savings.
- An Associated Press report from February 17, 2011 discussed how the government had busted a Medicare scam ring and arrested 111 people. Great work since it is thought that these 111 had stolen $225 million from the American taxpayer through fraud. Details include the following:
- One Detroit doctor who charged for partial toenail removals bilked Medicare out of $700,000 which turned out to be little more than toe nail clippings.
- The same doctor billed Medicare for removing three toenails from the same toe of the same patient.
- A Brooklyn doctor billed Medicare $6.5 million for hemorrhoid removals, most of which were bogus. One patient was identified as having hemorrhoid removal done ten times, which the article claims is not possible (I would hope not.)
- Three physical therapy clinics in Brooklyn were also busted which involved an organized group of Russian immigrants who bilked Medicare out of $57 million for giving elderly patients nothing more than back rubs.
Good news, but also bad news. The $225 million is less than .4% (best case) of the annual fraud inflicted on Medicare. Rather than hire IRS agents to go after newly criminalized American citizens under Obama Care who freely decide not to purchase health insurance, why not hire a few more resources to after the remaining 99.6% of the Medicare fraud that has not yet been shut down? Conservatively if you can wipe out 10% of the Medicare fraud a year, government estimates would say you would be saving $6 billion to $9 billion a year in savings.
- The lead story in the February 21, 2011 issue of Business Week talked about global food crisis that is beginning to pick up steam around the world. Bad weather and bad government policies could result in global food shortages and food price inflation, especially in poorer nations. That is the bad news.
The good news is that, according to the article, this means good news for American farmers and the American farm industry. Record food prices and riots around the world "have led to the biggest-ever U.S. farm exports, sending Midwest cropland to record values and boosting profits for rural banks and equipment makers...Income for U.S. farmers is expected to jump 20% this year."
It has never been better to be in the U.S. farm industry. Thus, this would be a great time to start cutting back most farm subsidies, the majority of which do not go to family farmers but to large farm corporations. It believe that the Federal government subsidies are in the annual range of over $300 billion a year. If you took just 10% of that immediately, the taxpayer savings would be about $30 billion. If you took that 10% away only from the prospering agricultural corporations (corporate welfare), the family farmer would be largely unaffected.
- Staying on the farm, consider a February 21, 2011 Associated Press article on broccoli. The article reviewed how the Federal government was spending $3.2 million in research grants to help eastern U.S. farmers grow broccoli in a climate that is usually not favorable for broccoli growth. The majority of broccoli is grown on the west coast and then shipped around the country. A South Carolina farmer is quoted in the article: "We're not attempting to put California out of business. We just want a piece of the action."
Think about how stupid this expenditure of taxpayer money is. I would be really ticked off if I was a California broccoli grower. In theory, a part of his Federal taxes are going to subsidize his competitors or would be competitors. If growing broccoli on the east coast is such a good deal, then let east coast farmers subsidize the research work to make it a reality. Let the free market decide who wins and who loses the broccoli wars, the Federal government should not be taking sides and subsidizing one group of Americans with taxes taken from another group of Americans.
Now, we are only talking about a few million dollars. But I would imagine this type of cross purpose spending goes on thousands of times a year. If you could eliminate just a 100 cases of this type of stupidity, you would save about $300 million a year.
- One last example. I checked out official government sources to find out how many civilians work for the Federal government. Table 494 from the 2011 Statistical Abstract of The United States, an official Federal government publication, shows that civilian employment was about 2.7 million civilians employed by the Federal government in 2007 and about 2.8 million employed in 2009, the last year data was available.
What if we reduced the number of Federal employees back to 2007 levels, a cut of about 100,000 jobs. We know from news reports that employees from at least three different Federal organizations, the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Interior Department, and the Pentagon have been busted over the past year for porn surfing on the Net during work hours. This is just one type of waste that could be eliminated, reducing the need for so many employees.
Now I know Pelosi and some Democrats would holler that this is adding to the nation's unemployment numbers. However, a cut of 100,000 public employees would amount to just about 2% of the annual rate of people losing their jobs in the private sector, hardly a hefty sacrifice by the government relative to the private sector. Given the advanced age of the Federal work force, you could probably attain this cut through attrition anyway.
Thus, if you conservatively estimate that each Federal employee, on average, is worth $100,000 a year in taxpayer costs when you consider wages, benefits, and an allocation of overhead, a cut of 100,000 positions would yield an annual savings of about $10 billion with little degradation in service.
So let's review:
- In about a half hour, a typical American such as myself, who has never been a politician and who has never worked for the government, identified anywhere from about $100 billion to $140 billion in unnecessary government spending.
- No animals were killed or harmed in the development of the budget cut list.
- No Americans went hungrier, sicker, or poorer as a result of any of the identified cuts.
- Corporate welfare was cut back, personal welfare or aid to the poor was unaffected.
- Americans' freedom was unaffected but the freedom of politicians to use taxpayer money to fund their re-election campaigns via earmarks was negatively affected.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment
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